| 2017 Rinkeby riots | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | 20 February 2017 | ||
| Location | |||
| Methods | Arson, looting, rioting, rock throwing | ||
| Resulted in | Riot subdued | ||
| Parties | |||
| |||
| Casualties | |||
| Injuries | 3 [1] | ||
| Arrested | 2 [1] | ||
On 20 February 2017, rioting broke out in Rinkeby, a predominantly immigrant-populated suburb of the Swedish capital Stockholm.
Rinkeby was previously the site of riots in 2010 and 2013. [2]
Rioting broke out in the evenings between Monday, 20 February - Thursday, 23 February, with a crowd of 25 to 30 masked men who assembled after a drug-related arrest near the Metro station. [3] In four hours of unrest, several fires were started, at least seven cars burnt, shops vandalized and police hit with rocks. One rioter was arrested for rock throwing. [1] [4] [5] The fire department had to wait for the police to secure the area before being able to extinguish the burning cars. [6] A number of shops were looted and a business owner was assaulted after having tried to stop the attackers. [6] According to Lars Bystrom, a police spokesman, a police officer "shot for effect" with intent to hit his target, but missed, and to clear the scene so the police could make an arrest. [1] [7] [8] [4] [5] A photographer from Dagens Nyheter newspaper said he was assaulted by a group of around 15 people. [9]
The Swedish police were criticized by local residents for taking too long to subdue the rioters and not doing enough to stop them. [10]
Because the riots broke out two days after the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, mentioned a Fox News segment he had seen about Sweden the night before, the Rinkeby riots of 2017 drew wide international attention. The president was mocked for the remarks by the international press, as well as Swedish officials. [8] [11]
Rinkeby is a district in the Rinkeby-Kista borough, Stockholm, Sweden. Rinkeby had 19,349 inhabitants in 2016. The neighbourhood was part of the Million Programme.
Rosengård was a city district in the center of Malmö Municipality, Sweden. On 1 July 2013, it was merged with Husie, forming Öster. In 2012, Rosengård had a population of 23,563 of the municipality's 307,758. Its area was 332 hectares.
Crime in Sweden is defined by the Swedish Penal Code and in other Swedish laws and statutory instruments.
The Malmö Mosque is the second oldest mosque in Sweden. It is located in Jägersro villastad, a neighbourhood in Husie, Malmö. It was inaugurated on 20 April 1984 and is administered by the organization Islamic Center. Adjacent to the mosque is a charter school, which is also run by the Islamic Center.
Until the late 2000s, terrorism in Sweden was not seen as a serious threat to the security of the state. However, there has been a rise in far right and Islamist terrorist activity in the 21st century.
Swedish contacts with the Muslim world dates back to the 7th–10th centuries, when the Vikings traded with Muslims during the Islamic Golden Age. Since the late 1960s and more recently, Muslim immigration from the Middle East, Balkans and parts of Africa has impacted the demographics of religion in Sweden, and has been the main driver of the spread of Islam in the country.
On 19 May 2013, violent disturbances broke out in Husby, a suburb dominated by immigrants and second-generation immigrant residents, including a substantial number from Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iraq, in northern Stockholm, Sweden. The riots were reportedly in response to the shooting to death by police of an elderly man, reportedly a Portuguese expatriate, armed with a puukko knife, after entering his apartment and then allegedly trying to cover up the man's death.
On 8 June and 9 June 2010, youth riots broke out in Rinkeby, a suburb dominated by immigrant residents, in northern Stockholm, Sweden. Up to 100 youths threw bricks, set fires and attacked the local police station in Rinkeby.
Riots broke out in Trappes, a suburb (banlieue) of Paris, France, on 19 July 2013 after the police arrested a man who assaulted a police officer, who tried to check the identity of his wife wearing a Muslim veil on 18 July 2013.
Dozens of reported sexual assaults in 2014 and 2015 at We Are Sthlm, a youth festival in the Swedish capital Stockholm, were not publicized by the police. The Stockholm police had received 38 reports of sexual harassment at We Are Sthlm in 2014 and 2015 together, from female visitors at the festival, most of whom were under 15 years of age, but had not publicized these reported harassments in their press releases then. Police spokesperson Varg Gyllander in 2016, during the commotion about the 2015–16 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, suggested that this non-reporting in 2015 and 2014 may partly have been caused by the police's fear to "talk about these things in the context of the immigration debate today".
On 15 May 2016, unrest occurred simultaneously in the Swedish towns of Norrköping and Borlänge, primarily in Million Programme Muslim-dominated public housing-areas, with stone-throwing against police and firefighters, car fires and arson attacks. The unrest took place across Sweden since late March. Public transportation was temporarily suspended in several areas due to stone-throwing against trams and buses. These incidents were mainly perpetrated by Muslim youths. These incidents were considered particularly notable as they represented the spread of unrest to outside the three major urban areas of Sweden. Across Sweden, more than 2,000 cars were set on fire between January and July 2016.
Sweden-bashing refers to criticism of the Swedish government, the Swedish people or Sweden as a whole. The opposite of Sweden-bashing is Suecophilia.
On 18 and 20 December 2008, the closure of an Islamic cultural centre that housed a mosque in the Herrgården neighborhood of the Malmö district of Rosengård, in southern Sweden, caused hundreds of youths to riot against police.
Islamophobia in Sweden refers to the set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam and/or Muslims in Sweden. Historically, attitudes towards Muslims in Sweden have been mixed with relations being largely negative in the early 16th century, improving in the 18th century, and declining once again with the rise of Swedish nationalism in the early 20th century. According to Jonas Otterbeck, a Swedish historian of religion, attitudes towards Islam and Muslims today have improved but "the level of prejudice was and is still high." Islamophobia can manifest itself through discrimination in the workforce, prejudiced coverage in the media, and violence against Muslims. The anti-immigration and anti-Islam Sweden Democrats is the second largest party in the Riksdag.
On 11 October 2016, a fire was deliberately set at the Malmö Muslim community centre in Malmö, Sweden, which housed a mosque. There were no injuries and only minor damage. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. A Syrian resident of Malmö was arrested, tried and acquitted and the incident was deemed to be arson, but not terrorism. In June 2017, a man was arrested in Germany, accused of working for the ISIS-related news agency, Amaq. Police claim he had contacted the accused before and after this attack in order to report back to Amaq.
Bombings in Sweden are attacks and sabotage using explosive devices by criminals in Sweden. The weapons used are weapons such as hand grenades and explosives intended for either civilian or military use. Legal authorities use the term allmänfarlig ödeläggelse genom sprängning and media in Sweden use the shorter term sprängdåd. This crime was not categorized separately prior to 2017. In 2018 there were 162 explosions, and in the first nine months of 2019, 97 explosions were registered, usually carried out by criminal gangs. According to Swedish police commissioner Anders Thornberg in 2019, there is no international equivalent to Sweden's wave of bombings.
On 29 August 2020, riots broke out in the Swedish cities of Malmö and Ronneby. After Swedish police prevented Rasmus Paludan, a Danish politician, from entering the country, far-right anti-immigration activists held protests and burned a Quran. In response, a mob of 300 migrants, mostly Muslims gathered in counter-protest, burned tires, threw rocks and chunks of concrete at the police and smashed bus shelters.
Riots occurred in several Swedish cities in April 2022, primarily against police who were stationed to protect events planned by Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan. The motivation for the violence was ostensibly Paludan's plan to burn a Quran; however, the police suspect that the event was used by criminal groups to target police. Two-thirds of those injured were police officers.
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